


Heroic Axiom No. 98

by manywheels



Category: A Practical Guide to Evil - erraticerrata
Genre: #navy-of-callow, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Gruff Parenting, Hurt/Comfort, I think?, Minor Character Death, Ranger's not a major character, Unbeta'd, We Dye Like Mne, accidental adoption, because she dies, holiday gone wrong, i don't know how to use tags, wait fuck maybe fayhem's my beta he helped me a lot, yeah actually all the typos are his fault
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:42:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25334089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manywheels/pseuds/manywheels
Summary: All Laurence de Montfort was looking for was a break from killing monsters. But there's a child in the Waning Woods that needs saving, and Laurence is just the person to do it.If only there weren't also fourotherchildren that also needed saving, even if none of them admit it, and a monster that looms so large only the Saint of Swords can consider ending her.(An AccidentalAdoption!AU in which Laurence has the misfortune of killing Ranger and inheriting her pupils as a result.)
Relationships: Hye Su | Ranger & Getting Murdered For Being An Awful Person, Laurence de Montfort | Saint of Swords & Alexis | Silver Huntress, Laurence de Montfort | Saint of Swords & Concocter, Laurence de Montfort | Saint of Swords & Indrani | Archer, Laurence de Montfort | Saint of Swords & John | Hunter, Laurence de Montfort | Saint of Swords & Lysander | Beastmaster, Laurence de Montfort | Saint of Swords & Tariq Isbili | Grey Pilgrim
Comments: 2
Kudos: 25





	Heroic Axiom No. 98

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the Practical Guide to Evil discord for inspiring me to write this, especially the folks on the writing group. Also I don't know how to do tags and any advice would be appreciated. Updates come when they come.

"Ninety-eight: Forests are never filled with singing animals or kindly druids. Bears who talk are rarely on your side, and heroes who treat with them should consider giving up adventuring and living in a market-town instead." – Two Hundred Heroic Axioms, unknown author

*****

Laurence is just setting up camp when she feels it. There’s no mistaking Tariq’s approach once you know what to look for. The sun shines a little brighter, the birds chirp more loudly, and if they’d been in a town even the air would have turned a little less grimy. If she’s honest with herself, she hates it. Creation likes Tariq in a way few others get to see, and Tariq’s utter grace in the face of that only makes it harder to resent him. 

She looks over their makeshift site, and notices the children are unnaturally still. She can’t really think of them as anything but that, not even after one of them came screaming out of the bushes to try and shank her. That one had spirit, though her technique could use some work. No serious villain would have been half so obvious, even under the kind of stress that all of them had been through. The rest of them had immediately reacted to that voice in ways that told of unpleasant history, and the fact that she’d put the girl down with about half a thought had not tempered their guard. They were ugly thoughts, no doubt about it.

“Right, you know the drill. Alexis, Indrani, catch us a meal and if either of you come back with more wounds than the animal you bring back I’ll make the other skin it on her own with her teeth. _La Coupe_ , help me build this fire, and if I find you’ve tried to make anyone’s hair that shade of purple again there will be trouble. John, set up the tents and be quick about it. Lysander, you’ll see a man in grey robes soon enough. Lead him back to camp and don’t give him any of your lip or you’ll regret it,” she barks. 

She’s learned early that the only way to make them do anything was to treat them like idiots who could hardly walk without being told to use their legs. The animal boy is likely stupid enough to talk to Tariq despite her warning but he’s probably the most receptive to a lecture about responsibility out of all of them. The two archers try their best to seem as if they aren’t watching each other - Indrani’s languid ease masks a tightness that’s matched only by Alexis’ shifty gaze hopping from treeline to treeline. The only one she’s really able to tolerate is Lysander, and that’s because he doesn’t bother her with anything. 

“We’re having visitors?” _la Coupe_ asks. Laurence doesn’t have time for mollycoddling but the truth is that people without names never have good stories. If giving the girl a title to hold on to prevents her from poisoning all of them in their sleep, she’ll grit her teeth and smile through it, just like she has every day of this cursed journey.

“With any luck, just the one,” she replies, reaching for the firewood. They didn’t need to know about the Ophanim, after all.

*****

Three weeks earlier

Laurence sometimes went to places to rest. She knew better than anyone that running from crisis to crisis with no break in between just led to mistakes on the field. The fight with the Unseen Warrior had proved it, if nothing else. Her left elbow still ached on cold nights, though the priests had told her they’d fixed it. So she’d decided to wander, for a while, without aim or impatience. It went against the core of who she was, but she knew if another ambush came upon her she would be better off ready for it. 

So she’d spent four days in Iserre, drinking wine and looking at the countryside before she admitted to herself that she hated the Arlesites and the Alamans both, and Iserre had somehow managed to combine the worst of the two into one pompous whole. Entire towns were filled with nobility and their hangers-on amidst a civil war and nobody batted an eye. In Gerbonne she’d punched a particularly annoying woman in the face for suggesting that Laurence would best serve Above by supporting Amadis Milenan in the civil war. The golden axe she wore at her belt proved entirely ornamental as she stumbled away from her, spitting blood.

The ensuing disturbance was inconvenient enough that Laurence didn’t see any reason to stay. So the next day she bought a horse, packed up her supplies, and decided that what she really needed was a week camping in the Waning Wood. After the last few months, killing some monsters without thinking about why they deserved it or whether she could have done anything different would be a welcome respite.

By the time she reached the outskirts of the Waning Wood she already felt better. Being surrounded by a forest that was most assuredly doing its very best to kill you was soothing, in a way. Some Fae, Autumn Court if she had to guess, flittered around her path briefly in the first few days but they left her well enough alone. She almost wished they’d tried some of their trickery, but the truth was that the Courts of Autumn and Spring knew her of old. 

None of the clearings she’d come across seemed safe. They all seemed to connote some variation of “This is a safe place for you, mortal, never fear,” in the way that practically _screamed_ “Trap!”. She slept with one eye open beneath daunting canopies, ate nothing that smelt funny, and by the end of the first week she was even whistling. She hadn’t whistled in years, and trying to elicit the correct tune from a half-remembered memory of her mother singing to her was a challenge she’d never thought she’d had to deal with. For a brief moment she considered **Listening** to herself, but it would be cheating to use an Aspect for such a frivolous use and there was probably a Fae around the corner just waiting for a complacent hero to trick into eternal servitude.

She should really have expected no better, when she saw the child next to the river.

*****

Tariq arrives before the two girls can return with dinner, which gives her an opportunity to speak with him with only a little chaos around her. He seems to be telling some kind of joke to the boy, who is flushed red in a way that she’d never expected of him, and Laurence privately admits to herself exactly why that might be the case.

“Laurence! What a surprise to see you here. Didn’t you leave Procer in order to avoid being prosecuted for killing the Prince of Iserre? I’d rather hoped you were done with regicide, you know,” Tariq says, with a grin on his face. He’s always liked pulling her leg about the outrageous rumours that swirl around her, and while she never gives him the satisfaction of reacting to it he really doesn’t need Mercy on his shoulders to tell him it annoys her.

He chuckles and says “And you’ve got some tagalongs now, I see. John here seems like a very polite lad. I was just telling him of the time I found myself at the Feast of Many Sighs and-”

“You met a man who was convinced he was a donkey, I know. Why that’s the story you insist on telling everyone you meet, I’ll never understand,” she interrupts. “ _La Coupe_ , Lysander,” she calls out to the others. “This is the Grey Pilgrim, Tariq Isbili. He will stay with us as we proceed out of this forest, and you are to listen to everything he says or I will make you walk out of the woods on your hands, you understand?”

The three children all look blankly at Tariq before returning to their chores. Laurence is beginning to suspect they don’t take her threats seriously, though they’d all seen her throw Alexis into a bog only two days earlier. The sooner she’s rid of them, the better. 

Tariq moves a little closer and she motions towards one of the edges of the clearing. They step past the corpse of a Spring Fae, and he peers at the arrow wounds on it for a moment before looking askance at her.

“One of the girls killed this one. I think they get competitive about who’s a better shot, and the time they spend making Fae bleed is time they’re not trying to get themselves killed in the middle of a misguided escape attempt,” she says. This one was one of Indrani’s, she decides. Alexis likes going for the joints first to immobilise them but Indrani’s got a touch of wildness about her. It’s the throat or nothing for that one.

“What have you actually done, Laurence? One moment I’m in Arwad, speaking to bureaucrats about the House of Light, and the next I find myself pulled north. I hadn’t even realised it was you until four days ago, and that only because nobody else could demand Creation itself bring me to you,” he says. Tariq is really the only person she’ll tolerate this tone from, and the truth is that she’s been trying not to think about where she’s found herself, but the chickens had finally come home to roost.

She sighs, and leans on the tree that seems least likely to bite her hand off. “I killed the Ranger. The children were her pupils.”

*****

She stopped whistling and cursed, very quietly, under her breath. If this wasn’t bait she’d eat her horse for breakfast, hooves and all. A child, so deep in the Woods, could only be one of three things: a Fae, a villain, or a child. None of those options boded well for her. She would have expected to feel a Fae skitter across her senses, but she admitted to herself that she’d killed startlingly few over the past few days. She hoped it was a villain of some sort. If it was a child… she did not need to consider that. _Yet_. 

For a moment she considered her position. A lone hero, travelling the deep, dark woods which were known for their hidden monstrosities, came across a child weeping in the shadows. What happened next? The child is a monster, and kills the unsuspecting hero. The child is a Fae, and tricks the hero arrogant enough to bargain with it. The child is a child.

It was a _beginning_ , Laurence knew. She was stuck, that much was true. Indecision would lead to her death sure as the Hidden Horror. Yet which of the three options was the one in front of her? Striking now would likely finish the story, but something niggled at her. There were no good options, and Laurence hated it. 

Instead she **listened** , and Creation became still. There was no discordance here. She discarded the possibility of villainy, for the Hellgods’ influence went unheard, though something pricked at the edges of her senses. It was surely no Fae, for their unearthly presence could not be hidden from her, not when she knew them so intimately. The child’s sobs, however, belonged in this place. They knew their place, they’d been here many times. 

There was no escaping it - Laurence was in the middle of the most tricky of stories this could have been. Killing her was out of the question. She could not have been more than fourteen, and the death of one such as her in this place would make every unfortunate ending she’d ever heard inevitable.

Yet offering succour to her would not leave Laurence safe, either. She could hear a faint memory of crackling fire, as if the girl had come here many times running from a refuge that was not safe for her. An innocent child in a forest, seeking escape from somewhere deep in the wilderness? Oh, there was a monster hiding in this story. To ensure that she wasn’t that monster she’d have to be the one to kill it. Following the girl back to her hut wouldn’t do anything but leave her in unknown territory at the mercy of something with long fangs and the hide of man. She bit back the deeper instinct to draw her blade, and instead remained watching.

A few minutes later, the girl ceased her weeping. She washed her face in the river, and Laurence briefly considered that even if she had been here before the likelihood in this place of some kind of creature biting her face off was not small. Then she looked around her, peering into the shadows, but Laurence was not some green incompetent and the girl satisfied herself that she was not being spied upon. Then she gathered up her cloak and dashed deeper into the foliage. 

Laurence cursed again, and considered that if she’d simply headed to Salia instead of travelling south to Iserre this farce could have happened to someone else instead.

*****

“Ah. I _had_ wondered what could have caused such a shift. Some three weeks ago, if I had to guess?” Tariq asks. 

Laurence grunts in agreement. “I’ve been travelling south since then. It’s the long way out of the Wood but going to Callow would have risked running into one of those Praesi bastards. Ranger used to be entangled with one of them, I wasn’t going to risk some kind of godawful star-crossed lovers plot.”

The corner of the clearing they’re standing in is almost peaceful. With Tariq by her side Laurence feels a weight lift off her shoulders, but they’re still in a forest of doom surrounded by danger on all sides. The longer they stay in the Wood the more likely an escape attempt is to go wrong, and the children are volatile enough that one nudge could result in half of them dead and the other half swearing vengeance. 

Tariq chuckles, low and deep, and in that moment Laurence wants nothing more than to leave everything to just sit with her friend and look at the stars.

“The Black Knight would never come for revenge against you, Laurence. He’s too focussed on Callow and Praes. If I hadn’t heard first hand that he was the Ranger’s lover I’d scarcely believe he had emotions,” he says. His tone turns, then, becoming less amused.

“But there _is_ another wrinkle. Refuge was a protectorate of the Kingdom Under. I suspect there was some kind of agreement aimed at preventing her cavalier actions from affecting them, but they take their agreements seriously. If nothing else some dwarves might use the death as an excuse to come to the surface,” he says.

“I haven’t fought a dwarf in years but they bleed just as easy as anyone else, Tariq,” she says.

“It’s another complication in a story that’s already forming, Laurence. If you’re avoiding-” he says, before she interrupts him.

“I’m not avoiding anything, you old bat,” she bites out. She’s just about the end of her tether, when she sees movement. The girls have returned, lugging a stag between them. Indrani has a bleeding lip that no animal could have given her, and Alexis has a limp that could not have been an accident, but neither of them is bleeding out while the other’s trying to make it back to Refuge.

“We’ll finish this later,” she says to Tariq as she looks to the two archers. “Stop blundering about and get here before one of you trips the other and breaks your face, we have a guest.”

*****

She spent the night oiling her sword. No magical weapon could be superior to her aspect, but leaning too heavily on **sever** would cause its own problems. The first, most important step was already lost to her - she was deep in the thickets of a story without any frame of reference save the one that she brought herself. The first hour she spent thinking of all the tales she knew of witches in the woods, grandmothers hiding from civilisation, angry mothers of children destined for greatness. All of them placed her in the same position - the interloper who came to shatter the world as it had been.

Laurence intended to avoid that, but she knew her role too well to rely on it. Too often she cleaned up messes, and not often enough prevented them from occurring. She could try and try to arrive as a guest to a village, give advice to some forlorn soul, and leave like a whisper in the night, but all she ever managed was to kill the monster that had been left festering in the darkness for years on end.

Then she put her sword back in its sheath, and crept back to the bend in the river, her horse stationed close enough that she could keep an eye on it, but far enough that if it were startled by something it would not spell her doom. The forest was quiet in the eerie way only the Waning Wood ever managed. It was the quiet that belied wolves in the darkness. Yet the river warbled like any she’d heard in Procer’s vales. No wonder the child came here for respite - it offered calm like few other places in the Wood. Even in places steeped in shadow and blood there were exceptions - Creation liked nothing more than a touch of irony.

A twig snapped, and Laurence held her breath. None could see her, that much she knew. Here was a moment like so many moments she’d breathed in. Someone was coming, and it would tell her enough - maybe too much - about the threat she was to face. There was nothing for it except to wait. Her fingers grazed the hilt of her sword, and her knees protested ever-so-slightly her deepened crouch. 

And for all the things she had ever done to disappoint the Gods Above, she saw two more children. Different ones. One with eyes like fury and a bow strapped to her back, and another one flanked by a wolf. 

“She comes here because she’s scared. Because she _knows_ the Lady doesn’t think she’s worth it, and she can’t handle it. What the fuck - “ the one with the bow said, before the other one cut her off.

“Why do you care about her, then? You keep saying it, and it’s getting very dull. You beat her up twice this week, and she’s definitely cooking something up for you in return,” the other replied.

“Because she doesn’t even fucking see it! The Lady’s the best teacher there is on Calernia and she’s so fucking busy making her stupid potions she won’t learn anything. She just runs away instead. It’s a _waste_ , Lysander,” the archer says.

That’s when she realises it. It’s nascent, in them, and they are far from the peak of their power. But undeniably - she is looking at the Archer. And she’d wager the other one’s got a similarly straightforward name - Druid, maybe, or - 

And then she realises another thing.

*****

Alexis shoots Tariq a sullen look, while the clench in Indrani’s jaw signifies that she’s failed, again, to hunt dinner down without help. Both of them have enough pent-up anger for a Callowan House of Light, but Tariq’s having none of it.

“Dinner! How lovely. Lucky for you Ashur's trade is picking up - I was able to buy spices I’ve not had the pleasure of eating for decades on my way here. I can’t remember the last time I had a proper campfire roast,” he says. 

Indrani spits to one side, and says “The only good chillis are from Praes. Everybody knows that.”

Tariq chuckles as if she’d made a particularly funny joke. “Where else do you think Ashur's buying from? The Dread Empire is making many friends now. Have you ever eaten biryani?” Laurence tunes out the rest of his conversation with her, seeing it as his best attempt at making life easier for both of them. As they walk towards the camp, Alexis remains sullenly silent until Laurence asks her how the hunt went. 

“How do you think it went? She ran off into the forest and nearly got swallowed by a man-eater before I could stop her. Then when I shot its leaves off to save her she accused me of trying to kill her! I could’ve just let her die in the plant, it would’ve saved me an arrow,” she hisses, trying not to catch Indrani’s attention. Of course, Archer’s too good at hearing for that to actually work.

“You bitch! You were the one who started it! And I didn’t fall into a man-eater - I was getting the stag out of its mouth so we could bring it back. How are you -” she starts, before Tariq steps in.

“There are man-eating plants this far west? How many men even stumble in this deep?” he asks. He’s probably not even feigning the curiosity, given his interest in assassination.

“They don’t - ”

“Actually - ”

Both girls start to speak over the other before stopping, and Tariq gives them equally bemused looks.

“Shut up, all of you. There’s work to be done and I’m not having you yammer on about the local flora and fauna,” Laurence says, as they finally make it to the camp.

The camp is the closest it ever gets to bustling, now. With all the children in the same place at the same time - something she’s learnt to be wary of - there’s a nervous energy. Yet as soon as she speaks the children all scatter. _La coupe_ has been hard at work on the fire, and there’s a cookpot merrily boiling water. John and Lysander have set up two tents - hers, and the one they share, and are hard at work on a third. They never listen when she tells them she’d prefer to sleep under the stars, because every night she’s tired enough that after taking first and second watches she sleeps in it, her bedroll more comfortable than the Wood.

Alexis and Indrani drag the stag to the fire, and Indrani starts skinning it. For a moment all of Creation seems to tense, though perhaps that’s simply Laurence’s annoyance, as the two of them exchange a few terse words. Then Lysander calls out to Alexis, and Indrani is left with the meat. It’s as peaceful a pause to their altercation as she could’ve hoped for, but even so she’d not let anyone shirk.

“Tariq, would you help _la Coupe_ with the spices? I’ll make sure Indrani doesn’t kill anyone by accident,” she says. Tariq only grins at her as he walks away, and it strikes her that she cannot wait to be rid of the whole damn circus.

*****

For several moments, Laurence allowed herself the pretence of argument. It couldn’t be. She hadn’t wandered that far west, surely, and not north, either. In any case Refuge was said to be a few tents and a watchtower - closer to a scratch in the ground than a settlement able to support several Named. No story could have pulled her in so far.

Then she loosened her grip on her sword, and forced herself to accept the facts. The beast-controller could not be the Ranger. But Hye Su was involved here. She was involved with all of them - the child weeping by the river, the one with the bow, the one with the wolf, and if her streak of terrible luck held, with more than those. The children were bickering, now, but in the well-worn way of those kinds of arguments that never went anywhere, but merely served to blow off steam. The girl strung her bow - massive as it was, it dwarfed her and yet she drew it like she had been born to it. Then she loosed, and in a single fluid movement drew another arrow, drew it, and loosed again. This was an aspect, Laurence knew. Each arrow flying straight and true over the river, deep into the forest. A waste, probably, but who was Laurence to speak? Just three days earlier she’d considered using an aspect to help her whistle.

The boy with the beasts let her rage for a little while, and then said “Are you done, Indrani? There’s a bear in the woods I want to speak to, and watching you hit targets only you can see isn’t fun. Neither is this entirely silly feud you have with Alexis. And the Concocter. And Hunter. With everyone that’s not me or the Lady, really, and that’s because you know I’ll set every crocodile in the Woods on you if you try anything.”

The girl huffed a curse at him, and for a moment it seemed as if she might start towards where Laurence had hidden herself. Then she unstrung her bow, and shot a sneer at the river, as if it had somehow offended her. “Go play with your animals, then. I’ve got reading to do, and this place still bores me,” she said, walking back into the same canopy that the weeping child had gone. The boy with the wolf glanced, warily, at her, and then in the direction of the arrows. He whistled - once, twice, thrice, and ran off towards them, his wolf lunging with him, and Laurence was left alone in the brush.

That confirmed the Ranger’s involvement, then. It also spoke to some other troubling details about Refuge - that it held to her philosophy about strength, and that the Named in her care were encouraged to attack each other if they thought they could get away with it. She could see it now, in her mind’s eye. In a year they would be fighting to the death, and in three only one would remain alive, and in seven the Ranger would kill that survivor, for having proved they were the strongest of her litter. In those seven years what havoc they’d wreak Laurence didn’t care to imagine.

Perhaps, for once, Creation had permitted her a chance like Tariq’s. A chance to nip a problem in the bud, before it could blossom into madness and destruction. Simply kill the Ranger, and the children would disperse like ash in the wind. She was not the monster in this story - she was the blade in the darkness aimed straight at its heart.

*****

Despite Indrani’s anger, she’s careful and patient with the stag. Laurence has seen men twice her age butcher a meal long before it got to being cooked, but Indrani shows no hesitation or discomfort with it. Laurence knows from experience that the skinning knife she’s got has a wicked edge, and Indrani handles it with the ease of long hours spent with it. She sits down next to Indrani and motions towards the stag. 

For a moment the girl stiffens, clutching the knife as if she’s thinking about stabbing Laurence with it. Then she relaxes as Laurence produces her own knife from her satchel - one with a bone handle she acquired in Ashur a few years ago - and takes over the job. She’s not as painstaking as Indrani, but she’s got reach and experience, which is what really matters.

“Alexis said something to piss you off, then?” she asks nonchalantly.

Indrani’s jaw clenches again, in the way that Laurence has grown used to seeing.

“Oh, don’t look so offended about it. The lot of you are like a pack of feral cats, always biting and scratching at each other. It’d be hilarious if I didn’t have to deal with it all the time,” she says. She’s silent for a moment as she finishes up a particularly tricky section while not getting too much blood on herself, and then continues.

“See, what I don’t want is to have to deal with the two of you bickering about bickering. You’ve already had a go at me with that knife,” she says, gesturing to Indrani’s left hand, “so you know I’m not going to be scared off. I’m not a zealot for talking like Tariq is, mind. But letting me know what got under your skin’ll not make me any stronger either.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Indrani struggle with it. Truly, Laurence doesn’t care for politics, and the politics of adolescent bickering particularly does not interest her. Yet Indrani’s anger is fearsome in full bloom, and Laurence knows it is dangerous to let fury fester in a Named of any kind.

“She said if I ever believed the Lady, then she deserved to die the way she did,” she says, and it sounds like a weight being lifted off her chest. That weight, however, lands straight on Laurence’s own shoulders. This isn’t a pivot, not really. But it’s momentous in the way that small moments are. She knows it, because a moment later she catches Tariq’s eye over the cookpot, and he gives her a smile. Not like the ones he normally gives her, when they’re playing the embittered veteran and the jovial mentor, but like he knows exactly what’s happening. It’s the smile of a friend who’s been through thick and thin with her, and more than anything that’s what confirms she’s got to be both careful and true with her response.

It feels like shards of glass in her mouth, truth be told.

*****

Laurence had wind in her sails, now. She had a scheme to stop and a way to do it. She remembered Langman, the Wizard of the West, telling her in that pompous voice of his that the direct plan was the one most easily subverted by Evil. He’d been right, too, because the Dread Empress was known for her deceit. But Hye Su wouldn’t bother with tricks. She’d gleefully murder a dozen faerie princes just for stepping on the path she happened to tread. No, with the Ranger Laurence’s best option was a sudden strike with no opportunity for a response, and her second-best option was a follow-up that also left no opportunity for a response. The longer the fight went on the more likely Ranger would simply outclass her. 

She felt the familiar burn in her gut as she thought about the Ranger leaving her bleeding on the ground when last they fought. But loath as she was to admit it, Laurence was still green, then. She’d **severed** all who stood in her way, but she’d yet to **listen** to Creation, or to make it obey her **decree**. Even now, her aspects would not guarantee a victory, but they’d give her an edge.

She’d have to become that edge, then.

Laurence waited a hundred more heartbeats, and walked back to her horse. She saddled it, and watched the forest before her grow still. As she made her decision she thought she felt the Woods sigh with it, though whether it was because the Gods Above agreed with her or because Creation itself knew a terrible battle was to come remained to be seen.

First she’d have to actually find Refuge. If Named children were coming and going from the river it could not be much further away, but without a better idea of what it looked like an attack would be foolhardy. Then she’d have to see how best to kill Ranger. Stealth was not her forte, and though she was passable at hiding, attempting it against Su would no doubt lead to a quick death. Third she’d have to plan her use of her aspects. 

**Decree** , she decided, would have to be her trump card. She’d be **listen** ing from the start, and **sever** would be the first cut. If the Gods were willing, the battle would end there, and she could ride out with her sword bloody. But if that didn’t work, **decree** would have to be what saved her. One way or another, Calernia would see a momentous death.

* * *


End file.
